23 - Rabbinic views on marriage, sexuality, and the family

Summary

SEXUAL PRACTICES AND JEWISH IDENTITY

Hecataeus of Abdera, a Greek ethnographer living in the time of Alexander the Great, wrote the following, “As to marriage and the burial of the dead, [Moses] saw to it that their customs should differ widely from those of other men. But later, when they became subject to foreign rule, as a result of their mingling with men of other nations … many of their traditional practices were disturbed.” Already, 400 years prior to the rabbinic period, Jewish communities had apparently lost the remains of their distinctive marital practices.

Complicated questions of identity attend to any discussion of Jewish sexuality, marriage, and the family in antiquity. Would a non-Jew stumbling upon a wedding between Jews or peering into the bedroom of a Jewish home have observed practices that he or she would have labeled as Jewish? Did Jews themselves understand their sexual and marital practices and assumptions as loci of identity, as distinctively Jewish? Would Jews of one community (for example, Palestine) who observed the practices of Jews in another (for example, Babylonia) have recognized their sexual mores and marital practices as Jewish?

This chapter will argue that Jews in the rabbinic period, by and large, did not understand their sexual and marital assumptions and practice as strong sites for a distinctive identity. In other words, it is anachronistic to term the marriages or, to a lesser degree, sexual ethics of Jews during the rabbinic period as “Jewish.” Jews more or less shared their understanding and practices of marriage and sex with their non-Jewish neighbors.